Instruction Guide
by Ms.Informed13
Summary: "You will have absolutely no idea what to do with yourself the first time you meet her. The teacher will say, Quinn Fabray, and she will raise her hand and say, Here. You will momentarily forget to breathe. She will be striking, in that you fully believe that she can start forest fires with a glance." AU Faberry, an instruction guide on loving Quinn Fabray from Rachel's POV


**A/N- Just a short Faberry story told through Rachel's POV. Embedded references are to 'A poem for terrible people' by Kelsey Rakes, who is an AMAZING writer.**

* * *

" _Is there an instruction guide on happiness? I could write one for you."_

.

You will have absolutely no idea what to do with yourself the first time you meet her.

The first time that you will be sitting in english and the teacher will say, Quinn Fabray, and she will raise her hand and say, Here.

You will momentarily forget to breathe.

She will be striking, in that you fully believe that she can start forest fires, as easily as she sets you ablaze. But that will stand in such sharp contrast to the way she is so cold. Like she's got to remain frozen to keep from disintegrating entirely.

You will think of the freshman chemistry class you're taking, and you will think about atoms, and how the very molecules of you vibrate when you look at her smile.

You will fall in love with her so easily, and you will have no idea what to do with yourself.

Chronicle her. Keep your distance for now.

She is broken in the way that only truly beautiful things can be. So beautiful that it will distract from the protruding shards. Pieces of herself that she's peeled away to try and make sense of herself.

Do not try to fix her.

Not yet at least. After all, how can you expect to put her pieces together when she doesn't even know what the finished product will look like?

Learn every single one of her sharp edges so when she does let you touch her, you won't cut yourself on a corner.

Some wounds don't heal the same.

You will be so young, and so will she. You will think that you are infinite, that you've got all the time in the world. She will know better.

…

" _Step one, paint your eyes cobalt blue"_

…

Be her friend. You will want so badly to love her. You will want to swoop in, gather her in your arms, press a kiss to the top of her head (try to take a subtle sniff of her shampoo, fail miserably, end up inhaling her hair, and having to hold your breath until your lungs burn so she doesn't know what you did.)

Do not.

Not yet at least.

Be there for her.

It's alright for you to love her. It's even alright for you to tell her that you do.

You will sit on opposite ends of the couch in her basement. You will lean against the armrest and extend your feet out towards the middle of the unclaimed territory of the center cushion. Your friends will be dead asleep, sprawled on the floor, in armchairs, as the remnants of 'Silence of the Lambs' will play on the television.

You will sneak your feet as far towards her as you possibly dar. She will not say anything, and she will not even look at you as she grabs your socked scouts, and pulls them into her lap.

Let her.

Let her adjust her blanket so it's covering your feet too. Let her hold them there for the rest of the movie. Because she will know how cold your feet _always_ are, and because sometimes she will just need to be _grounded_ and what better way to be grounded than through your dancer's feet? Sure and steady from pounding the pavement.

Sure and steady like your heart about to beat out of the birdcage of your ribs when the credit roll and you say, I love you.

She will smile, and her eyes will glow eerily in the dark when she will say, I love you too, before she will squeeze your feet, and shift out from beneath them to go turn off the television. You will fall asleep at separate ends of the couch. When you wake up with her hair splayed across your legs, her cheek pillowed somewhere between your knee and your calf, do not move away. Wait for her to wake up, and when she does, smile.

Do not be the first one to pull away. Enough people have pulled away from her to last a lifetime.

It's alright for you to love her.

…

" _Step two- Hang fireworks from coat hangers."_

…

You will go to college, and so will she. You will be the first one to use your metro pass, visiting her the weekend after she moves in.

It will be a few weeks since you last saw her because your school began first. When she comes to pick you up at the train station, she will smile so wide, and you will too. It's alright for you to run, so long as you're running towards her.

It's alright for you to throw your arms around her and hug her tightly.

She will give you the grand tour of her dorm room which will take a full five minutes because she will tell you to stay behind the roped off visitor's area and not use flash photography, and you will dutifully ask the history of each artifact she's unearthed and deemed worthy enough to recover from the digsite of her childhood.

Her roommate will be a nice enough girl from Texas studying Biology. She won't be there when you first arrive, but you will learn her later.

Quinn will take you to the dining hall closest to her dorm for lunch. She'll smile and flirt with the upperclassman working the front entrance as he scans her student card. You'll be jealous for about a full minute until you're standing in line for food and you realize that he never even asked to see your student card.

She will be in line behind you and learn close to whisper to you like it's top secret, she will say, When I visited campus the first time my host taught me that trick.

Smile. Do not shiver when her voice rolls down your spine. She is still not whole, and you still need your steel spine to hold yourself together.

That night, in her dorm room, you will meet her roommate, and when you get back from getting ready for bed in the bathroom at the end of the hall, you will not miss how her roommate is smirking, and Quinn is blushing.

Pretend not to notice. When you both squish into the extra long twin that night, you will be reminded how dorm beds are definitely not build for two people.

She will flatten herself against the wall, leaving about three inches between the two of you (which is impressive considering the bed is hardly thirty inches across).

You can close the gap. It's alright for you to touch her. But just remember to do it carefully. Avoid her sharp edges, and lay your head on her shoulder, your arm over her waist.

She will stiffen, but she won't pull away.

Hold her, and when you wake up the next morning, tease her about her unruly hair and how she's a bed hog.

Pretend you don't see the blush on her cheeks when you run your hand through her hair to give it some semblance of order.

It's alright for you to love her.

…

" _Step three- Turn into a Dandelion"_

…

You will love her.

You will have loved her with a little 'l', no italics since the first day you met her. Then, years later when you're both older, when she's finally ready, when she's burned off all of her fingerprints learning to weld herself back together again, and when she's learned how to put bandages on her finger tips all on her own, and when despite all of this, she lets you help her anyway. Then you can love her with italics, capital 'L' _Love_ her.

Move in with her.

When she isn't paying attention, change the order of books on her shelves. She will have so many, and she will organize them so carefully, so do it in small bursts. Switch 'Go Set a Watchman' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' because it will take her about twenty minutes to decide if she wants them alphabetical or chronological, or whatever other configuration her beautiful crazy mind will come up with when you first move in.

See how long it takes for her notice.

She will drive you absolutely mad, because she will do ridiculous things, like throwing up all the blinds and opening all the windows because she will need to taste the air outside. You will not really be able to blame her because your apartment will be more shoebox than living quarters, but it will be _yours._

You will forget she does this every single time, and you will emerge from a long shower in nothing more than a thong and a stolen shirt to try and lure her into bed. She will look at you with those eyes that excite you and scare you just a bit too because she will look like she absolutely wants to _devour_ you.

Then she will smile and say something so completely _her_ like, I never realized you were such an exhibitionist Rachel Berry.

And you will realize that the windows are open and anyone walking by down on the street just got quite the show.

Do not get angry with her.

Laugh and believe that this will take the stones away.

Kiss her because you are both so very young and so very present.

You will graduate and so will she, you will finally know what it really means to be broke in New York.

It's alright to love her.

And now, you don't have to worry about her sharp edges. She will still have them, but you will have learned them so well that you will be able to avoid getting cut.

…

" _Blow Away."_

…

You will be happy, and so will she.

You will struggle, neither of you being exactly where you'd planned by the time you'd planned to be there, but you will succeed brilliantly too.

You will build a life with herm and despite anything else, the foundation will be secure.

There will be hard days. Day where she'll crack at the seams and she'll try so very hard not to fall apart. You will need to be there to tell her it's alright for her to fall apart.

Pick up the pieces. Help her put them back together. By know, you will know what to do.

There will be days- nights rather- where you wake in the darkness alone. You will roll out of bed and wander through your house until you find her in the first place you look. She will be standing in the nursery, hands gripping the edge of the crib until her knuckles go white, she will have silent tears tracking down her cheeks.

Do not dry them, not yet at least.

Wrap your arms around her. You will think that maybe if you hold her tight enough, she won't fade away from you. You will know this is untrue.

Tell her, She's perfect.

She won't take her hands off the railing, but she will lean back against you. She will say, I want to give her the world.

Press a kiss into the side of her neck where you can reach, count her vertebrae as they press into your ribs when you lean into her back. Reassure yourself that she is going nowhere, she is here with you.

Your daughter will roll over, her tiny body somehow managing to sprawl across the entire length of her crib. You will remember how those sure, little feet used to feel, kicking out against your stomach.

Smile, say, She hogs the bed even worse than you do.

She will laugh the same watery laugh that she did years ago at your wedding when you told her that if you had to dance with one more of her uncles, you would divorce her.

She will take her hands off the railing.

You can wipe away her tears now. Be careful you don't cut yourself on the crystal of her cheekbones.

Take her hand, and bring her back to your bed. Curl up behind her, and bury your face in her neck. Press your warm feet against her perpetually cold ones, and don't let go.

Tell her, I love you.


End file.
